I am obviously still very much in need of Jerry Lewis marching children towards their terrible fate with a smile painted on his face and a dance in his pants. But I assume this opinion is a given and not even worth drawing any attention to.

Last edited by crumbsroom (5/14/2022 10:59 pm)

EXTERMINATED CINEMA

FREAKED:
The case of the Missing Zygrot 24  


 

     Alex Winter's $12 million directorial debut and instant cult classic Freaked, produced by 20th Century Fox, almost didn't get made. Then it barely got distributed. Then the only surviving print was almost destroyed. Official physical copies of Freaked remain out–of print and can fetch hundreds of dollars on the collectors’ market.    

     “Initially pegged as a mainstream comedy by Fox — with a planned wide release that included action figures and a Gap campaign skewering posters — the film was basically dumped by Fox after head Joe Roth, who had greenlit the project, left the studio, but it picked up raves at TIFF and has been winning fans over ever since.”
—Indiewire, January 2012 

     In the January 2012 interview with IndieWire, Winter revealed several insights about the troubled history of Freaked. The film originally had the blessing of 20th Century Fox chairman Joe Roth, who was known to greenlight avant–garde projects like Naked Lunch and Barton Fink, and Freaked had generated significant buzz in the Hollywood world. All that changed when [url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/03/arts/joe-roth-leaving-fox-for-a-deal-with-disney.html#:~:text=Rupert%20Murdoch%2C%20the%20chairman%20of,of%20the%20Fox%20Television%20network.]Joe Roth stepped down as chairman of Fox for a job with Disney[/url]. Rupert Murdoch promptly replaced Roth with Peter Chernin, who didn't share Roth's appreciation for the weird project. Shooting of Freaked was already complete, but the film's post–production and advertising budget were slashed. Following its well–received debut at Toronto Film Festival, the $12 million film premiered in only two US theaters and ended up making less than $30k at the box office.  

From the IndieWire interview:            
     “The problem is, the guy who ran the studio left and you can’t make a movie this idiosyncratic without a lot of high level support. It was over in an afternoon. If Joe [Roth] had left three weeks earlier this movie never would have been done. But we never got released. Tom and I released it by ourselves and self distributed it all over the world by ourselves with one poster and one print.” Winter went on to describe how they would go to each theater at the end of the film’s run and ask for the print and poster back so they could book it at the next location. 

     Freaked got a VHS rental release in 1994 and found much of its wider fan base in the mid–late 90s when it frequently played on HBO and Starz. It then gained a reputation for being very hard to find. Anchor Bay offered some relief in 2005 when they released a 2 DVD box set of Freaked. Only a few years later that DVD set was out–of print and fetching high prices on collectors’ markets. An unopened copy today can set a collector back $300. 

The IndieWire piece continues:        
     …for years, repertory houses couldn’t book the film because Fox claimed they didn’t have a print. When one finally turned up in the Midwest, it was about to be “exterminated” until Phil Blankenship from the New Beverly Cinema in L.A. stepped in.
     “About a year ago [2011], the guys at the New Beverly in L.A., who I know really well, were trying to show the movie,” Winter said. “And I was like, ‘There’s no print, it doesn’t exist.’ It turned out that Phil Blankenship, who runs the New Beverly, who’s a total God in the world of repertory cinema, found a guy in the Midwest who worked at a place where, basically movies go to die. They exterminate negatives and the day after Phil called me and I [told him] there’s no print, he called me and said, ‘Dude, they’re going to exterminate ‘Freaked!’ [I said] ‘What do you mean?’ [Phil] was like, ‘My friend says it’s like the dog pound [for films]. They wanted me to exterminate ‘Freaked!’ but luckily he was a cool guy so [instead] he stole it.”

     The year following this interview, Anchor Bay released Freaked on Blu–ray, but that copy is now also out–of print and can cost about $200 on the collectors’ market. A Spanish all–region Blu–ray import can now be seen advertised on the Intertubes for around $40, but I have no idea as to its legitimacy.

The easiest way to see a high–quality transfer of Freaked these days is to watch it on YouTube for free, but it can also sometimes be found in the back alleys of Torrentistan.

     I won't say you absolutely must see Freaked, but, no wait, yeah I will. You absolutely must see Freaked, featuring giant eyeballs with machine guns, trolls falling from airplanes, a human slug, Mr. T as the Bearded Lady, Bobcat Goldthwait as Sock Head, Alex Winter as the Hollywood sleaze, and Randy Quaid in one of the most memorable performances of his career as Elijah C. Skuggs, merciless mad scientist and proprietor of the most hideous mutant freak show in the nation of Santa Flan. The soundtrack scorches with the likes of Bill Laswell, Parliament/Funkadelic, Henry Rollins, Blind Idiot God, and the Butthole Surfers. The soundtrack was released on vinyl in 2020 and retails for $50. And as of this printing, a retail copy of the film in any form physical or digital remains off the table.

Hopefully we will be able to close this case file when Freaked sees the light of day once again, but if you can’t wait to see it, just bake some macaroons, settle in, and click below…



 

Last edited by Rampop II (5/21/2022 1:09 am)

Rampop II wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

I am obviously still very much in need of Jerry Lewis marching children towards their terrible fate with a smile painted on his face and a dance in his pants. But I assume this opinion is a given and not even worth drawing any attention to.

What's the Jerry Lewis thing?
 

crumbsroom wrote:

Jerry Lewis marching children towards their terrible fate with a smile painted on his face and a dance in his pants..

I read up on this. Holy crap I'm scared to watch that!   

So, it might get a screening at the LOC after June 2024? Sounds like asses in seats to me. Or can the script's authors still keep it from public view?

Concentration camp movies give me the shivers. I haven't even watched Schindler's List. I remember that WWII documentary series The World at War seemed to always be playing when I was a kid in the 80s. I assume it just aired multiple times throughout my childhood but it felt like that series was always around. Lurking. Ready to draw hapless channel–surfers into its grainy grey grimness. 

That... that violin! That miserable, mournful violin!!! The trembling vibrato of wretchedness and woe! Convulsions of lamentation, abandon all hope, child, and despair! 

I digress.

Weird to think that in only the decade prior, "the very term 'holocaust' was hardly known and that the holocaust was "a little discussed phenomenon." Is this true? I guess what did we have film-wise before that? Night and Fog and The Pawnbroker? Diary of Anne Frank counts I guess but it doesn't take place in the camps. Twilight Zone had an episode in the 60s. 

So, looks like this is a case of a film kept under wraps because everybody having anything to do with the film hated it. 

Last edited by Rampop II (5/21/2022 1:06 am)

Bliss (1985)
Or, "The Case of the Palme d'Or nominee and Australian Best Picture Winner Pulled from Distribution over the Small Matter of a Kid With a Swastika on his Sleeve Getting A Blowjob From His Sister at Their Parents' House For A Bag of Cocaine."


No, not the Bliss from 1997, nor the one from 2019, nor 2021. If anybody knows how to find a copy of Ray Lawrence's 1985 dark comedy masterpiece, especially the one with the deleted "tour-de-force monologue by Barry Otto, which was captured in a single unedited take," I'm sure I'm not the only one here who would very much like to know. 
 

I think Rampop copied my DVD burn of the film, but the problem is finding the film in print to purchase has become very difficult.  I also had a VHS of the film at a video store I worked at in the mid-90s, and that's where I saw it for the first time.  I've never seen a disc version available in the wild.  My burn copy came from a late night cable showing, and it has the 'bug' in the bottom corner.  (Also is 4:3 formatted.)

Just checked and a UK DVD copy is currently available at Amazon for $110.

But I'd rather light a candle than curse the darkness...

Rock wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

Rampop II wrote:

Bliss (1985)
Or, "The Case of the Palme d'Or nominee and Australian Best Picture Winner Pulled from Distribution over the Small Matter of a Kid With a Swastika on his Sleeve Getting A Blowjob From His Sister at Their Parents' House For A Bag of Cocaine."


No, not the Bliss from 1997, nor the one from 2019, nor 2021. If anybody knows how to find a copy of Ray Lawrence's 1985 dark comedy masterpiece, especially the one with the deleted "tour-de-force monologue by Barry Otto, which was captured in a single unedited take," I'm sure I'm not the only one here who would very much like to know. 
 

I am modestly certain that this was at a video store I used to go to in Toronto. So if you're willing to get on a plane to come check and see if it actually is there (I give it a 75% chance), I can give you directions once you are in town.

Lol is this BSV?

I dropped by there recently for the first time in over years. They were nice enough to honour my old stamp cards.

Eyesore. They were notorious for having DVD rip of shitty old VHS tapes though, so any hopes should be very tempered.

Rampop II wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

I am modestly certain that this was at a video store I used to go to in Toronto. So if you're willing to get on a plane to come check and see if it actually is there (I give it a 75% chance), I can give you directions once you are in town.

crumbsroom wrote:

They were notorious for having DVD rip of shitty old VHS tapes

Sounds like my kinda place! 

The owner probably has even worse taste than me, and he has a talent for talking endlessly when you just want to grab a stack of 50 or so movies and go, but I've rarely been to a place that so vitally understands what film can be. A life changing, pile-of-shit store.

I don't know about monitors, but you probably will need a region free player to watch PAL DVDs. Depending on your genre interests, it can easily justify the cost. For example, the state of martial arts movies appears to be a lot better with Region B (likely because the Weinsteins gobbled up the Region A rights before... you know...).

Last edited by Rock (5/24/2022 8:24 am)

...

...

I'm just gonna get this one out of the way:







Maclunkey.